The criminal law establishes crimes and
the proper type of punishment for each of them. But what is the correlation
between crime and punishment? And how those measures and penalties are seeing
through the eyes of society?
When someone breaks a rule, so he/she
got punished. That is the way things work, or at least how they should work.
You can see this from a macro perspective (society), or from a
micro-perspective (your own reality).
A few days ago, my wife grounded my 2
years old son because he wasn't having a good behavior. In other words, he
broke the house rules. They had a conversation about what had happened and his
punishment was to stay in his bedroom for 10 minutes alone. After that, it was
the time for my wife and I have a talk. In my opinion, her measure was too
harsh. So, in this case, we were talking about the same "crime" with
different opinions about what would be the correct punishment to the
"infractor".
The grounding was unpleasant, and she
issued it purposefully to serve as his punishment. However, it is not a law. It is not written
in any place that the correct measure, in this case, is to ground him, but she
decided based on what she believed that would be the best punishment for him.
In order to correct those discrepancies
and to avoid that anyone would take their own measures based on their own
beliefs, the laws were written as wells as the punishments for the violation of
them. But it seems that are some different views about the application of the
law. There are those who believe that, choosing to behave badly, you must,
therefore, be blamed and held responsible for your bad behavior. In other
words, it is the called "an eye for an eye" which means that the
punishment should fit a crime.
On the other hand, there are those who
believe in punishment as an example to the society. From a micro-perspective it was exactly what my wife did with my
son. When she grounded him she was trying to give him an example and show the
consequences if he would choose to break the house rules again. Analyzing from
a macro perspective if we had siblings, we would be giving an example to the
other son. He will notice the consequences and think twice before breaking the
rules as his brother did.
The law is not perfect. It is opened
for interpretations as well as the punishments are opened for controversies.
Although we may not agree sometimes with the balances and counterbalances ruled
by the system, they are the foundation of a well-structured society.
